Snapdeal launches mobile marketplace, Shopo

Aiming to help small businesses find their customers, e-commerce portal Snapdeal on Wednesday launched 'Shopo', a mobile-based marketplace.

"It is an app platform. It is targeted at small sellers, artisans, individual sellers and home entrepreneurs. It is a zero commission mobile marketplace with easy registration process and seamless listing where sellers and buyers can chat to buy and sell," said Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl.

"It is an open marketplace showcasing various product collections and categories. We target one million shops online in the next one year. It is currently available on iOS and Android," he added.

Bahl said the company witnessed 30,000 product listings from 4,500 shop-owners in the new platform in the last 30 days.

Snapdeal at present has 150,000 sellers from 500 cities, out of which 30 percent sellers are women. It has an assortment of 12 million products. Around 70-75 percent of its orders are made through mobile.

Saying that the mobile is one of the key drivers fuelling the growth of e-commerce in the country, Bahl added: "Currently less than 0.1 percent of the small and medium business (SMB) in India have online presence and Shopo is trying to address this opportunity by creating a platform which is very easy and convenient for the shop owners to set up their shop."